One Hundred Years of Solitude cannot be understood by analyzing the plot. Its style and structure is not driven by plot like many novels. Instead, it takes a wider approach and focuses on the life of a family and a town. It can be considered as the story of the town Macondo. It can also be considered as the story of the people who founded the town, the Buendias. The novel begins with the formation of town, as Jose Arcadio and Úrsula found the town. The town continues to grow and remains largely isolated from the outside world. Later, the town comes into contact with others in the region. This leads to civil war and the once peaceful town is forced

...it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth (Garcia Marquez 422).

One of the important points about this passage is the reference to Jose Arcadio Buendia barking in a strange language. This emphasizes his solitude by showing that he is not even capable of communicating. He has become a foreign part of his society and doesn't even seem to be recognized as human anymore, but is treated more like an animal. This emphasizes how solitude has cut him off from others completely. This process of being determined while young, failing, and eventually withdrawing into solitude, is not unique to Jose Arcadio Buendia. Many of the men in the novel follow a similar pattern, including Colonel Aureliano Buendia, whose solitude involves focusing entirely on making gold fishes, melting them down, and making them again. Not only has Colonel Aureliano Buendia resigned himself to solitude and forced the cycle to repeat, but he also seems to recognize the cycle through repeating his actions with the gold fishes. Jose Arcadio Segundo shares a similar fate. He leads the workers in the strike against the banana company and is the only survivor of the massacre. He initially tries to achieve something by persuading everyone that the massacre did occur. However, similar to Jose Arcadio Buendia, he finds the task to hard and gives up. He also withdraws into solitude and focuses on deciphering the old prophecies. It was noted previously that the people forgetting the massacre is significant because it means that despite significant events happening, it means that they return to the same point. They do not change, learn, or develop in a way that could improve their future. As the only survivor of the massacre, Jose Arcadio Segundo is important to preserving its memory. However, rather than continue to fight to have the people learn the story, he escapes into the past by concentrating on the old prophecies. This action means that there is no hope for the people to learn from the past. This shows how the cycle is partly because people choose to forget and partly because people of the past hold the truth but do not pass it on to future generations. This shows the damaging nature of solitude and how it is partly the cause of the tragic cycle seen. In short, solitude is a way by which one generation becomes separated from the next. Returning again to the idea that events move in a linear fashion, it can be observed that one event leads to the next, which leads to the next, which leads to the next. Solitude prevents this same linear pattern occurring for the development of people because one generation does not lead to the next in terms of knowledge and understanding. There is a gap between one generation and the next and this results in the next generation starting at the same point as the previous one instead of moving forward.

The link of the start of the novel to the end also suggests a circular process where everything ends at the same point it began. In this, Garcia Marquez seems to be showing how life is circular and endlessly repeats. One issue that confuses this is combining the idea that time moves in a linear fashion and the idea that life repeats itself. Throughout the novel, one event leads to another and Garcia Marquez presents the events in the order at which they occur. In time then, there is a period of one hundred years between the start of the novel and the end. How is it that time passes and yet everything ends up in the same place it started? This can be understood by focusing on how people respond to events and who people are, rather than what is happening

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 4384
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page double spaced)